Interlacement of double curves of immersed spheres

Abstract: We characterize those unions of embedded disjoint circles in the 2-sphere which can be the multiple point set of a generic immersion of the 2-sphere into 3-dimensional space in terms of the interlacement of the given circles. Our result is the one higher dimensional analogue of Rosenstiehl's characterization of words being Gauss codes of self-crossing plane curves. Our proof uses a result of Lippner and we further generalize the ideas of Fraysseix and Ossona de Mendez, which leads us to directed interlacement graphs of paired trees and their local complementation.

Review text

Up to self-diffeomorphisms of the two-dimensional unit sphere \(S^2\), there is a bijection between disjoint unions of smoothly embedded circles in \(S^2\) on the one hand and the corresponding trees on the other; the correspondence ``disjoint union of embedded circles \(\leftrightarrow\) tree, is described in the paper under review. The author calls a tree paired if it has an even number of edges, which are arranged into pairs. He says that a paired tree or, equivalently, the corresponding disjoint union of paired embedded circles in \(S^2\) is realizable if there is a generic immersion of \(S^2\) into Euclidean \(3\)-space whose multiple point set is equal to the paired circles (as commented by the author: so the generic immersion has no triple points and we assume that two circles in \(S^2\) form a pair if and only if their images are equal as sets under the immersion). The main result of the paper under review says that a disjoint union of pairs of smoothly embedded circles in \(S^2\) is realizable precisely when certain conditions (specified in the paper), expressed in terms of the relative positioning of the circle pairs in \(S^2\), are fulfilled. This result is also rephrased in terms of directed graphs. The proof has a combinatorial-algebraic flavour. A two-dimensional analogue (for closed curves in the plane) of the main result was proved by \textit{P. Rosenstiehl}; see for instance [Adv. Appl. Math. 23, No. 1, 3--13 (1999; Zbl 0935.05036)].

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